Today we practiced writing Ww's.  We are working hard to keep our letters in the right space on the lines.  Ww's are tricky!  We went to the library and listened to a great book called Duck! Rabbit!  The students talked about the two points of view in the book.  We also worked in the computer lab and practiced measuring, subitizing, counting, and using shapes.  We also had a Mystery Reader today and listened to a wonderful story called When Blue Met Egg, by Lindsay Ward.  Ask me to tell you about the egg!  
We started our day looking at a beautiful red panda.  Then we watched a short clip with a playful red panda from the Cincinnati zoo.  We wanted to share this cuteness with you!

No more delays, please!!!!!  
Juliet

We had a very fun day today.  We celebrated our February birthdays.  We watched Winnie the Pooh as part of our celebration.  We finished our solid shape necklaces we started yesterday.  We used Mod Magic to form the shapes.  We rolled the clay and flattened to make the faces of the solids.  The necklaces are not completely hardened, and some of us are pulling on the necklace and breaking the shapes, so I suggest taking it off when home and letting it dry to harden more for a couple days.  We worked with solids finding the different faces of similar shapes, and played Cover the Pizzas with pattern blocks.  We read another story by Rosemary Wells called Otto for President.  I was very impressed at how well the children figured out the motives of the candidates.  In the end, Otto won because he listened to the children in the school, especially the kindergarteners, and because he didn't attack his opponents.  I think the cookies probably helped him win too!

Please note the Black HIstory Month program originally scheduled for tonight has been postponed until next Friday evening.  Your child should have a flyer that was in their cubby in their backpack.

There are a few upcoming events I would like you to know about.  
Wednesday, March 18, at 3:30 in our classroom I will be having an organizational meeting for The Great American Bake Sale.  This has become a class tradition for my classes, and one that the children often talk about when they come back to visit me.  We have a bake sale at Giant Foods at Cabin John to raise money for the No Kid Hungry Campaign, which is part of Share Our Strength.  You may see some commercials for the bake sales on Food Network.  They also have a show about childhood hunger in America, but I don't know if it will be on anytime soon, so I will have a page on our website about the bake sale, as well as information about childhood hunger in America.  If you cannot come to the meeting but would like to help out, please e-mail me.  I will be sending out a Sign-Up Genius for the planning meeting, but then you will receive two more e-mails about baking for the bake sale and selling.  Every year I am overwhelmed at the enthusiasm the class has for this activity, as well as the support of the Potomac community.  Every year but one, we have raised over $1000.  Last year we raised over $1300!  Be sure to check the website for more information.

Tuesday, March 31 our class, along with Ms. Wang's third grade class, will be having a Book Character Celebration.  We would like children to dress up as one of their favorite book characters that day.  We will have some special activities with our third grade buddies to celebrate the book characters we have come to love.  I have not told the children about this yet, but wanted to give you a heads up so you can start thinking about a costume.  Check Pinterest for ideas!

Wednesday, April 1 and Thursday, April 2 are the dates we have for Kindergarten Orientation.  These two days your children will not come to school so alternate plans will need to be made for them. 

Have a wonderful weekend!  (NO SNOW PLEASE!)
Juliet

Today was such a fun, busy day!  We had an awesome party!  The activities were great, the food was not only delicious but beautiful, and the kids got to have pink milk, just like Lola in the Charlie and Lola stories!  A huge thank-you to the parents who helped out and who sent in things for the party.  Thank-you for the beautiful plant, chocolates, and the huge valentine.  Thanks also for all the parents who stayed and helped to clean up our room!  I know our building service workers are grateful and will be very happy when they walk into our room to clean tonight!  

Here's a special valentine picture for you to see hearts in nature.  Ask me to tell you about what we noticed!

Enjoy the long weekend!
Juliet

Today we studied some interesting photographs of wasps and their nest.  Ask me about what I notice in these pictures!  We found connections to our learning in math with shapes, as well as our life cycle study in science.  

We listened to a wonderful story called Bippity Bop, Barbershop, by Natasha Tarpley.  This book is about a little boy and his first haircut at the barbershop.  We listened and made text-to-self connections about our first experiences getting a haircut, as well as other memorable firsts and the feelings we had doing something for the first time.  We also learned more about the job of a barber, the tools they use in their job, and where the work.  We wrote today about the first time we did something and our feelings.  We are working on adding details to our story.  
Today we had a class meeting about conflict resolution.  We discussed what we thought a conflict was, gave examples of conflicts, then checked our understanding with a video about the word conflict.  We watched three one minute stories about two friends who had conflicts.  We brainstormed ideas, both good and bad, about how to resolve the conflict.  Then we watched the video to see how the characters resolved their problems.  We talked about how important it is to stop and think before we act out and possibly make a poor choice in how to solve the problem.  We will continue to work to Stop, Think and Do and to use the DeBug Strategy for solving kid-size problems.  
Check out this very special Sesame Street clip with Robin Williams and The Two-Headed Monster as they illustrate the word conflict.

We're looking forward to celebrating Valentine's Day tomorrow!  
Stay warm!
Juliet

Today we read a funny book called Do Unto Otters, by Laurie Keller.  This is a great book about manners based on Socrates lesson "Do not do to others that which would anger you if others did it to you."  Ask me about Do Unto Otters and what I learned about manners today.  We zoomed in on table manners then and shared table manners we know.  We wrote and illustrated one important table manner that we know.  We worked more with plane shapes, as well as solid shapes.  We learned about cylinders, cones, pyramids, cubes and prisms.  We even learned to identify different kinds of pyramids.  One of our learners earned the name of Mr. Synthesizer today when he put together what he knew about hexagons and prisms to identify a "hexagon prism."  

Have a great evening!
Juliet

Today we worked with the short vowels a, i, o and u.  We reviewed their sounds and went on a hunt around the room for words that have those short sounds in them.  We wrote them on Post-It Notes and added them to our chart on the Promethean Board.  We found out that we sure have a lot of words in our room!  
We sang a song that has become one of our favorites.  It's a book and a song called I Got Two Dogs, by John Lithgow.  Yes, that John Lithgow!  Ask me to sing along as we watch this song together.  (I never tire of hearing the kids sing this song as they read this book or sing along with John Lithgow himself.)  

If you sent me an e-mail about volunteering to talk to our class about your job, I will be contacting you this week to set up a date and time.  If you are considering this, please let me know by Friday if you would like to come in so I can work out a schedule.  Thanks!

Have a peaceful evening!
Juliet

We have had a very exciting couple days.  Yesterday we celebrated the 100th day of school.  The 100's projects were great!  We invited our third grade buddies to come look at them, as well as the 100 picture display of our first 100 days. They also looked at the 1oo words we spelled together.   
Today we welcomed some of the children who will be attending kindergarten next year at Bells Mill.  They visited in the morning to see what kindergarten will be like.  We read an interesting poem with some challenging words for our Word Birds.  We used clues from the poem and what we know about wind to figure out the meaning of the words.  There were also some challenging words to read in the text, but we used what we know about words to figure out those words as well.  We also worked on spelling words and making sure we really stretched out the words and listened for those sneaky sounds at the second to the last sound in the word.  We found out that when we slow down and really give it our best effort, we can spell those four letter words with the sneaky sound near the end.  In the afternoon, we continued our 100's celebration.  We worked in teams of four to build the tallest tower we could with just 100 cups.  The teams had their ups and downs, but learned they had to be patient with each other and try things in different ways.  Of course, teamwork was the most important part, and having to come to agreement on just how the tower would be built was critical to success.  We had a nice play time, with one group deciding to Zen Doodle with me, and other groups playing in our workshop, building, and making things from scraps of paper.
We wanted to share the pictures we started our day with today.  The kids had so much to say about these two photographs.  This heron has so many interesting external features that we could have talked for a long time about them, but I had to cut off the discussion.  We shared a lot of things we noticed, wondered about some things, and had some ideas of what might be happening.  I hope you enjoy looking at this beautiful purple heron.

Have a wonderful weekend!
Juliet

Today we continued to talk about one part of persistence, which is showing your best effort in what you do.  We talked about what it looks like, feels like, and what you need to do to be able to do your best.  We know that being first or a fast finisher isn't necessarily best effort.  We read a great book by Barney Saltzberg called A Little Bit of Oomph.  We need to give that little extra oomph to make our work and learning our best!  We will continue to work on remembering what we need to do to work our best and to learn to look at our work or performance and being to self-evaluate so we know what we need to do to make our work our best.
Today we worked more with deep breathing.  We put a little stone on our belly to watch as we practiced inhaling and exhaling.  We watched a great video clip about belly breathing.  Check it out below!

We began a unit of study in Social Studies about jobs.  We worked with a team to think fluently and write down as many jobs as we could.  Wow!  These little people know a lot about the world around them.  We also looked at a couple books of artwork and found plane shapes in artwork. 
Tomorrow is the 100th Day of School.  We are very excited about our celebration. I am also looking forward to seeing the creations made by our kinders of 100.  We will display them in the room for some of our school friends to come and see.  

Have a nice evening!
Juliet